


Wherein Jim has bruises in pretty colors

by kayliemalinza



Series: Rambleverse [46]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Amazonia (Rambleverse Setting), Bruises, Drunkenness, Gen, Kayliemalinza's Rambleverse, Multi, Pike's Reclaimed Captaincy (Rambleverse Timeline)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-08
Updated: 2010-12-08
Packaged: 2017-12-25 21:31:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayliemalinza/pseuds/kayliemalinza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Drunk and happy and marked up.</p><p>Teaser: Uhura rises up from the plush, satiny pillow she'd claimed as her personal throne the day it (mysteriously) appeared in Amazonia. "Let me see," she says imperiously.</p><p>Jim lays his hand over the bruise on his belly and grins, sloppy but sufficient. "Don't wanna," he says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wherein Jim has bruises in pretty colors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [order_of_chaos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/order_of_chaos/gifts).



> For my [prompt post](http://kayliemalinza.livejournal.com/271165.html), Chaos asked for: _Jim and bruises, because bruises turn weirdly pretty colours sometimes, and I think he'd appreciate that._

"Yeah, I think that's chartreuse," says Jim. He pokes at the edges of the bruise just to see it blanch beneath his finger.

"Chartreuse ain't a color," Bones says deliberately. "It's a goddamned conspiracy, is what it is."

Jim blinks at him, and Bones blinks back, and the hammock that they're tangled up in together swings back and forth, and that's. Unfortunate. Who the hell gets in a hammock when they're drunk.

(Idiots.)

Uhura rises up from the plush, satiny pillow she'd claimed as her personal throne the day it (mysteriously) appeared in Amazonia. "Let me see," she says imperiously.

Jim lays his hand over the bruise on his belly and grins, sloppy but sufficient. "Don't wanna," he says.

Uhura snorts. Her hair does something. Jim isn't sure what it does exactly but it is expressive and maybe impossible? He can't remember if Uhura managed to get all the sparkly things out of it. Scotty had a very impressive collection of sparkly things, which is now not a collection so much as dispersal, so maybe Uhura's magical hair action is one of those, lurking in the tresses, laughing at its own cleverness in not being found.

That's another maybe-impossible feat, because there was a whole search party of fingers earlier in the evening. At the very least it was a party, with some searching involved. Uhura had given an impromptu lecture on grooming rituals on some alien world and Bones made jokes about chimpanzees. Scotty apologized a lot. Starfleet officers know how to have fun.

(Some days, it's fun enough just being alive.)

But that was some time ago, and this is now, with Jim in the hammock with Bones and with Uhura standing next to the hammock wanting to look at his washboard abs. The bruises are just an excuse.

"Show me," Uhura says, and is that a Spock imitation? That is. That is straight-up Spock inflection with the smoky tone of command and all the. You know. Simmeringness. No choking, though. Spock doesn't choke anymore and Uhura never chokes Jim. She pinches.

(That's relevant.)

"Why should I?" Jim says, and shifts his weight so the hammock swings back a little when Uhura steps forward. At the other end of the hammock, Bones gurgles. His leg twitches against Jim's. Hammocks are not the best idea ever. Not forever, anyway. The hammock showed up (mysteriously) and it was the best idea ever at the time, but not anymore.

"Because," says Uhura. She stops to think, and gets lost in thought somewhere, and the thought she's lost in makes her lip curl up with devilment. Devilment! That's why she's dating Spock, see. Devilry and devil ears. She has a sharp ear, too, and he has pointy ears, and it all fits together. But every jigsaw puzzle has its gaps, see, just begging to be filled. Jim's working on that. Everybody loves sandwiches.

(Especially Scotty, but that's a seduction for another time.)

"It's her handiwork, that's why," Bones slurs, and his smile is sloppy and wet and, though it wouldn't suffice for flirting, it's enough for Jim. Because he likes Bones, see. He likes his smile and his eyes and how he yells but doesn't mean it.

"It's hurty handiwork," Jim says. "She hurt me."

"You deserved it," Uhura snaps. Sort of snaps. 'Snaps' implies a certain speediness and clippedness but what she's got is more gooshy. Figuratively speaking. The rest of her is still sleek and toned and sharp at the corners. Jim knows this.

He knows this and yet, because the world is a cruel and repetitive place, he is forced to experience her edges again when she darts (topples) forward and snatches (scratches) his hand away from his belly.

"Aw, man...." says Jim.

Uhura gazes down proudly, then fondly, then musingly at the clear-edged pair of finger-tip shaped bruises. "I could make it look like a flower," she says.

Jim protests, but it doesn't matter. She pinches him again.


End file.
